GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Five principals explain how they trimmed staff and cut offerings to make required budget cuts. (Times)
• The city school board okayed a controversial DOE contract with Verizon. (Times, Daily News, Post, NY1)
• Many attendees were striking Verizon workers who favored delay over rejection. (GothamSchools)
• Chancellor Walcott will attend a meeting for families at a school closed because of toxins. (Daily News)
• Michael Benjamin: Since the city’s middle schools underperform, why not eliminate them? (Post)
• New hires show Mayor Bloomberg is sticking to internal talent after picking Cathie Black. (Crain’s NY)
• Joplin, Mo., opened schools two months after a deadly tornado ended the school year. (Times, AP)

An unlikely union force turned out for the monthly school board meeting tonight to protest a controversial contract that was up for approval.

For once, it wasn’t members of the United Federation of Teachers that was most vocal against the city’s education proposals, but thousands of angry phone technicians with the Communciation Workers of America.

The workers are part of a 45,000-member nationwide strike against Verizon for higher wages and better health benefits. For two weeks, the New York Locals  have picketed in front of Verizon stores and corporate headquarters.

But tonight, the workers took their fight to Murry Bergtraum High School – coincidentally across the street from Verizon’s main headquarters – where the Panel for Education Policy voted to approve a $120 million contract for the telecommunications company to provide data services to the Department of Education. (more…)

• The Panel for Educational Policy just approved several controversial contracts. More soon. (GS Twitter)
• The principal of Banana Kelly High School, which is awaiting a turnaround plan, has resigned. (EdVox)
• Few NYC students landed summer internships, but those who did got good experience. (The Lookout)
• The city is planning to halve a program that prepares students for specialized schools. (Insideschools)
• In Camden, N.J., poverty and violence still cripple schools. (American Prospect/Hechinger Report)
• Speaking of Insideschools, the site launched a shiny new redesign last week — congratulations!
• A working paper by three economists finds that only urban, “no excuses” charter schools work. (MIT)
• A charter school principal explains the finding that math gains exceed reading ones. (Mike Goldstein)
• A journalist who has covered ESL issues is becoming an ESL teacher in D.C. (Learning the Language)
• A city teacher pens a “Dear John” letter to his once-loved social studies books. (Mr D’s Neighborhood)
• The annual Phi Delta Kappa poll finds the public trusts teachers, but not unions. (Hechinger Ed Blog)
• An analysis of kindergarten teachers as street-level bureaucrats in education policy. (Larry Cuban)
• A lawmaker wants the federal government foot more special education costs. (On Special Education)

Diane Ravitch, speaking at a GothamSchools event two years ago.

Is Diane Ravitch a “paid union spokesperson,” her famous change of heart inspired by fees from the teachers union?

The accusation, levied by the philanthropist and hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson recently, draws from a new book about the education reform movement by Steven Brill. But the suggestion that she was bought is simply not accurate, Ravitch told GothamSchools.

Brill, in an interview, also insisted it’s not the conclusion that his new book, “Class Warfare,” aims to draw.

In a short passage about Ravitch, one of the leading critics of the reform movement, Brill writes that she frequently spoke to teachers unions but did not disclose her speaking fees from them. He estimates that her take from groups that have resisted the movement, including teachers unions, might have exceeded $200,000 in just over a year.

In an interview this week, Ravitch told GothamSchools that she received “less than a third” of the amount of money Brill calculated from teachers unions. (That is, she has received under $67,000.) She said that the majority of her speaking engagements are done for free. (more…)

For the first time since the city imposed a hiring freeze two years ago, the number of teachers entering the classroom from alternative certification programs has risen.

While some senior teachers worry about finding positions, two prominent organizations, Teach For America and New York City’s Teaching Fellows, are contributing hundreds of new teachers to the city’s teaching force. The organizations estimate that they will bring about 800 new teachers into classrooms this fall.

That would be 25 percent more than last year, when the groups brought on just under 650 new teachers, about 2,000 less than in 2006.

The dropoff began in 2009, when the Department of Education enacted restrictions limiting most hiring to teachers who were already in the system. The policy severely curtailed recruitment plans for TFA and Teaching Fellows and in a matter of two years, both were producing just a few hundred teachers per year. Most of those teachers worked in shortage areas, such as science and special education.

Now, as the city has eased some longstanding hiring restrictions in new subjects, those numbers are inching back up in response to demand. (more…)

With just weeks to find teaching positions before the start of the school year, recent college graduates rubbed shoulders with veteran teachers at a Department of Education job fair yesterday.

New teachers who attended the fair said they are optimistic about their chances of finding a school to hire them, now that the city has relaxed its two-year-old hiring restrictions.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be — a lot of my friends have already received offers,” said Arbiana Asani, who is looking for an English teaching position after graduating from Hunter College in June.

But pessimism was the prevailing mood at the fair among experienced teachers whose previous positions were recently eliminated. Those teachers said few jobs were advertised in their license areas and that some principals seemed to balk at the expense that would accompany their years of experience.

Caroline Schulz said she left the job fair with the sense that no schools would be hiring an art teacher so late in the summer. She has twice been excessed from art teaching jobs at a time when more principals are unable to fund full-time arts teachers. This will be her second time entering the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool for teachers whose positions have been eliminated.

“The reasons were definitely the budget cuts,” said Schulz, who has been teaching for close to two decades. “In my experience, it’s always the arts that are hit first.” (more…)

• Concerns about toxins in schools is growing as the city leases more industrial sites. (Gotham Gazette)
• A new poll puts Mayor Bloomberg’s approval rating at its lowest point, mostly over the economy. (Times)
• Budget appeals netted city principals an extra $27.7 million to use for their schools. (GothamSchools)
• New York State School districts must up their teacher pension payments by 29 percent this year. (WGRZ)
• A small crowd of religious groups and youth activists rallied against mandatory sex education. (NY1)
• A Colorado school district will start making school lunches from scratch this year. (Times)

• What would Chancellor Randi Weingarten do? And how about UFT President Joel Klein? (Teacher Beat)
• City Councilman Fernando Cabrera wants the city to hold off on the DOE’s Verizon deal. (Daily Politics)
• And Verizon’s New York president wrote a letter of his own urging no delay. (Scribd via OurSchoolsNYC)
• Everyone’s talking about teacher quality. But what about principal quality? (Corey Bunje Bower)
• Inspired by our story, Norm Scott recounts a bridge-building project he taught 18 years ago. (Ed Notes)
• A city teacher offers five reasons why he’s not joining his colleagues in tossing his desk. (Mr. Foteah)
• States might not have to adopt common standards to get NCLB waivers, after all. (Curriculum Matters)
• The phrase “Texas Miracle,” debunked in academic achievement, is back in political discourse. (Atlantic)
• A ruling against a Colorado voucher plan has left some families and schools at sea. (Ed News Colorado)
• Gov. Cuomo signed a law toughening requirements for school bus drivers. (City Room, Daily Politics)
• A teacher in the ATR pool recounts a marathon interview with a clueless “talent coach.” (NYC ATR)
• Embattled Philadelphia schools chief Arlene Ackerman skipped a principals’ conference. (Notebook)
• Did the Koch Brothers finance opposition to desegregation efforts in North Carolina schools? (Alternet)

Two-thirds of principals who pushed back about the budgets allocated to their schools got good news last week — and money in the bank.

Of the 250 appeals filed this year, 162 resulted in full or partial budget restoration, Department of Education officials said today.

But while the number of appeals was up 50 percent this year, the amount of money added back to school budgets rose by just 20 percent, meaning that each principal’s award was smaller on average.

Last year, 166 principals filed appeals and about two-thirds were successful, winning a total of $23 million from a central Department of Education emergency fund. This year, principals had the same rate of success but received just $4.7 million more, for a total of $27.7 million this year.

In July, we profiled two principals who were filing appeals for the first time. One of them, Joseph Nobile of P.S. 304 in the Bronx, received enough support to hire back five of the seven teachers and staff members he had cut, we reported last week.

The other principal, Lisa Siegman, told us today that to her “incredible relief,” P.S. 3 got a little more than $195,000 added back to its budget. She said that amount will allow her, at a minimum, to replace one teacher who left the school and add another teacher in first grade, where enrollment growth has made an additional class necessary.

Ninth-grader Ikiya Devonish prepares to load weight onto her group's bridge, with the help of City Tech Professor Anthony Cioffi.

Many schools have summer “bridge” programs to bring new students up to speed. City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology has ninth-graders build actual bridges.

The two-year-old school’s summer orientation program includes a bridge-building competition where incoming freshmen can showcase their newly acquired engineering skills.

The orientation kicks off an intensive program that condenses all of high school plus a taste of college into three years. That’s a steep challenge for many students at the Downtown Brooklyn school, which admits students without considering their grades or test scores. But school officials say about three-quarters of the small school’s first entering class is on track to spend a fourth year studying full-time at the New York City College of Technology, the high school’s partner, free of charge.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott attended this year’s competition today, offering congratulations and consolations as students pushed their popsicle-stick bridges to the breaking point. Tension mounted as students, teachers, and supporters watched to see whether any bridges would bear more than last year’s record 109 pounds.

One bridge did: The winning team, Building Fanatics, loaded 114 pounds of geometry textbooks onto their structure before it collapsed. Stephon Stevens, a ninth-grader who came to City Poly from Explore Charter School, said the team guessed that moving popsicle sticks from the bottom to the top of the bridge design would make it stronger.

Four of every five students at City Poly are boys, in keeping with a trend that cuts across many of the city’s career and technical education schools. (more…)